Panasonic RP-HS900 Lightweight Headphones

Here’s an alternative to the traditional monitor-headphone style. The headband on the RP-HS900s reaches around the back of your neck rather than over the top of the head, and the earpieces are on spring-loaded arms, so they’ll stay in your ears during radical maneuvers. The design may also help you avoid the unbearable headache caused by your goggles squeezing the headphones’ arms into your brain for many hours at a time. The RP-HS900s feature Panasonic’s Virtual Motion Sound System (VMSS), with a built-in amplifier that picks up and boosts the bass signal around the 50-hertz range, allowing you to actually feel the vibration of your bass-heavy music. My only misgivings about these headphones (and I feel it’s my duty to warn you about this), is that there are photos of Rollerbladers on the packaging. This is actually a pretty big deal¿it almost banished them from the pages of our magazine altogether. SRP: $44.95 panasonic.com